Arlo on Teaching Methods

From the album Precious Friend, by Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie. Arlo introduces "Garden Song" with some thoughts on how we learn. I wish I'd had Arlo to fall back on in grad school, because by the time I got there, they figured the "boring method" (i.e., some rote memorization from which you can draw new conclusions, create new ideas) was very much looked down upon. I think there's some middle ground.

This’s a kinda easy song, let’s hold one second, let’s learn this song, ‘cause this is, I mean, I know everybody likes singin’ with Pete, but I learnt this song from Pete, an’ it’d be almost the same thing. So, now I know, I mean, the difference, I know, I’ve been watchin’ Pete now for a few years, and he does somethin’ I can’t do, which is, he sings the songs twice at the same time. That’s what we were talking about before, celery consciousness, an’ Pete can do it. It’s the same –it’s – he sings the song once in front of the song and then once with everybody. That’s hard. So, I’m gonna try it, but first, let’s do it the normal way, which is the way we all learnt stuff in school. Now I know, people wanna forget about that, because you don’t figure you can learn anything that way, but it’s wrong; you’ve been learnin’ new ways to learn stuff an’ it don’t work. Right? So. Go back to the old way. It’s the old, what they call the “borin’ method.”

Music Room!

Yesterday was so busy. Between appointments and re-doing the house (to a point), I didn’t have time or energy to type much. We turned our guest room into a music room for me. I have four guitars, a banjo, a sax (Gran-Gran’s), a clarinet, a flute, a couple of recorders of different sizes and a keyboard. That takes care of the instruments, I think. The rest are electronic stuff and a guitar stool and music stand. And Kaye’s desk. She just uses it as a file cabinet, but moving it out of the room would be a lot more difficult than moving the bed out was. I hope having a “music room” will help me focus. There was hardly room in the bedroom to store all the stuff and practice (or open closets). I've got a framed picture of Joan Baez up and am planning a Dylan and Arlo picture so now I’ll have a place that says “practice!” the way my study says “work” and the bedroom says “sleep” (or read or paint, but there are only so many rooms in the house, and Kaye wants some of them, and we need one we can lock James in when the plumber comes or whatever).

I can’t find such a thing as a sax or clarinet mute. That’s disheartening, especially with the sax. I guess I will literally “stick a sock in it.” For now, I’ll just nap. I'm so tired . . . but grateful for the space!

I guess the bedroom can double as the recuperation room. :P

The Seven Deadly Sins Revisited

Thomas’ blog alerted me to the seven new deadly sins. In grad school, I was playing at being a Medievalist (and did my thesis on the afterlife), so the seven deadly sins have been in my head for a while now. Well, I can always get six of them. I have to sit around and wait for God to tell me the one I’m forgetting – it’s never the same one. (I used to have my students come up with the seven dwarves just to see why I needed a prop to remind me. My students seemed to think I should know these things.) Anyway, the seven deadly sins are:

• Pride
• Greed
• Lust
• Envy
• Wrath
• Sloth
• Gluttony

Notice that the first five are all sins of the soul. It’s a sin to lust after someone but not to transfer that sin into action. This might lead to some “I’ve already done it in my head; why not do it in my bed?” thinking, but, presumably, if you manage to avoid lust, you won’t be committing any sexual misdeeds.

The new “deadly sins” (I’m choking a bit as I’m typing this – hard to take seriously) are:

• Pollution
• Genetic engineering
• Obscene riches
• Drug abuse
• Abortion
• Social injustice
• Pedophilia

At least one of these is ridiculous: if you are committing pedophilia, you’re already committing lust of some sort, so that’s repetitious.

All are societal issues. Time was, religion was between man and God, not man and mankind. Oh, I know the “Do unto others . . .” and the ten commandments, but, really, if you get your head on straight (“do unto others”), you’ll be trying to do what you think is right (given that the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, you’ll fail). It seems to me that my religious beliefs are between me and God, not me and the EPA. Presumably, I’ll do the right thing.

And I think genetic engineering is the right thing, if used properly. I also think abortion is regrettable but the best option in some situations. What constitutes “obscene” riches is anybody’s guess, but at least I don’t have to worry about that one.

Also, it occurs to me that Arlo is in for some seriously hard time in Purgatory, what with that Alice's Restaurant incident of being a litterbug. While littering is a bad thing, for God's sake, it's not a deadly sin!

Social injustice needs to be defined a bit more. Am I at the giving or receiving end? Probably both, but social injustice tends to be a societal problem, not an individual one, and we can't help being a part of an imperfect society. Does this new "deadly sin" suggest that we are all tainted? Then why point it out? It's just not an individual issue.

I remember something about the body being a temple of God, but drug use (by which I'm assuming the reporter meant drug abuse) can be caused by a variety of things, often started relatively innocently -- a prescription taken as directed? a joint given to you by an uncle when you're a teenager? And what constitutes drugs that can be mortally abused? Do alcohol and tobacco count? How about coffee? Why are some drugs okay and others not? Again, this is a societal issue.

The first seven deadly sins make sense, maybe because they aren’t so picayune and getting between me and God. Luckily, I’m not Catholic. I’m not anything but a hopeful agnostic of the Christian variety. But maybe the Church should stick to matters of faith and trust God to guide the individual conscience. I'm reminded of Jesus' saying that people should "[r]ender to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." (Mark 12:17, KJV) While I don't expect everyone to listen to Jesus, I would expect it of the Church!

I Wonder as I Wander

I talked with my mother this afternoon. I talk with my mother on a more-or-less daily basis. She is willing to take my calls once a day. It sounds worse than it is, I guess. I mean, if I had to listen to me go on about nothing every day, I’d never answer the phone if it could possibly be me. Today, I was going on about the guitar and methods to try to use to learn it. She said, basically, that I start a bunch of things but never finish them. To a certain extent, this is true. To a certain extent, it may be a neurological quirk. Whatever the case, though, it is a characteristic my mother believes I should work to get out of. And, I might add, it is characteristic that she believes it. She is very goal-oriented.

“Say something in Italian,” she says, mocking the fact that I have worked at Italian (to read Dante), Spanish (because it’s everywhere) and French (because I am of French descent, actually have college and graduate credits proclaiming that I should know something, live with a French teacher and am close friends with a French woman). I also went through a short-lived Hebrew phase when I was considering converting to Judaism. That venture is a story in itself. “Ciao,” I said. What’s it to her, I ask, if I shift gears now and then? I’m not a great multitasker. I tend to take to one thing for almost my entire waking hours and really immerse myself in it. I am trying to make myself do at least a bit of this or that unless I have a really good reason not to, but I’m not expecting to win a Nobel or anything at this point. The thing is, my mother hasn’t done anything like play the guitar or learn a foreign language. She went from high school to marriage and business school to motherhood to bookkeeper/secretarial work to college to teaching high school to retirement and remarriage. I’m not saying she didn’t accomplish anything; I’m saying she’s lived a normal life, worked very hard, and kept two kids and a husband under control. Well, I never burned anything down or got arrested, anyway. No one’s had much luck keeping me under control, which is what this is about, I guess.

The fact that I earned a BS, BA and MA mean nothing because I am not using them to make money (because I am disabled). She hasn’t said that, but I think that’s what she thinks. My brother and sister-in-law have said as much. While I did expect to be working after graduation (and I did work – for five years as a programmer and seven as a college freshman composition teacher), I went to college primarily because I like to learn. I had hoped to keep learning and helping others learn.

What I devote my time to now is learning. What I try to do is observe and learn the mechanics of things I appreciate so that I can create something. To me, the observation is at least as important as creation. Anything tangential that comes from it is purely that: tangential. To that end, I’ve played at the Personality Forge building chat-bots and becoming obsessed with how other bots work, am studying and gradually putting into play Internet languages and trying to learn usable programming languages, since what I know won’t get me anywhere in Windows, and I did enjoy programming. I was actually good at it once. I’m working on and off with paints, charcoal, pencil, digital camera and camcorders, guitar (leaving banjo, sax, flute, clarinet, piano and recorders on the back burner due to the passage of time), doing close readings of various literary works as well as reading for knowledge and perspective. (I consider pretty much all reading fun.) I play at chess. I watch movies on DVD, and, once every twenty years or so, I go to a concert.

The thing is, I’ve felt pretty bad about the whole “you can’t do everything” situation since about the time I turned forty. Click here if you want to see a typical self-centered English major take on the situation. Suddenly I realized that time is passing and I’m all over the map. I am working on and culling a lifetime to-do list. But I think my mom, who is a responsible, decent human being – don’t get me wrong (she might read this) – needs to have an itinerary for everything, whereas I start off somewhere and explore. For instance, I might start off with the Arlo concert to reading a book about Woody to learning more about Huntington’s disease. Then I might volunteer some time for an organization about Huntington’s disease. I never know what I’ll be up to from day to day.

But what is life for? I wonder as I wander . . .

My New Guitar

I’ve been reading Ed Cray’s Ramblin’ Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie the past couple of days. Somewhere in the house is another Woody biography that I read a few years back when I “discovered” Arlo. Having neurological problems that cause psychiatric problems and problems with fine motor skills, I’m drawn to his plight. His time and place on this earth didn’t help any. It’s a good read. I may finally read The Grapes of Wrath, which I was supposed to read in high school. Instead, I got my mom, who was then the bookkeeper at my high school (mortifying, but it had its perks) to get me the Cliff’s Notes, and I copied them in the teachers’ lounge for everyone in my class. Fortunately, we were a special GT class, so I only needed seven copies.

Yesterday, I was seized by an insane desire – no, desperation – to buy a twelve-string guitar, having seen Arlo, read about Woody, playing around on my other guitars (classical, acoustic, electric and now twelve-string). I will be paying for this whim for the next four months or so. Ah, well. There are worse things to throw money at. And I’m working on building up calluses. So far all I’ve got are near-blisters. The problem is that the only lessons I had were in classical guitar, but that’s not what I want to play. I want to play folk music. So what I know now is how to read music and play it on the guitar. Unfortunately, most folk music is written in tablature or chords, which I have yet to learn. I understand the concept; it’s just that I can’t understand why tablature was necessary when we already had a perfectly good musical notation system in place. So I guess I’ll be keeping myself motivated. Oh, I’m left-handed, too.

I’ll be off of the Guthries and onto something else soon enough, in case you’re sick of it. I get hell-bent on something and then get distracted by something else. Wonder why I haven’t achieved what I’d hoped to in life?

Fun with BabelFish

Since I live with a French teacher, many of my acquaintances know as many as five languages and can puzzle out others, so I feel a little out of the loop when they start speaking French. It's particularly disturbing when my name is the only word I can understand. What are they saying about me? I must learn French, Spanish and Italian (to read Dante, mainly) before I die. Anyway, I decided to take a leaf from Mark Twain's book and translate the "Alice's Restaurant" chorus into several different languages and back into English via BabelFish. I found the results amusing:

English:

You can get anything you want at Alice’s restaurant. You can get anything you want at Alice’s restaurant. Walk right in, it’s around the back, just a half a mile from the railroad track, and you can get anything you want at Alice’s restaurant.

English to Spanish:

Usted puede conseguir cualquier cosa que usted desea en el restaurante de Alicia. Usted puede conseguir cualquier cosa que usted desea en el restaurante de Alicia. La derecha de la caminata adentro, está alrededor del trasero, apenas una mitad de la milla de la pista del ferrocarril, y usted puede conseguir cualquier cosa que usted desea en el restaurante de Alicia.

Spanish to French:

Vous pouvez obtenir toute chose que vous souhaitez dans le restaurant d'Alicia. Vous pouvez obtenir toute chose que vous souhaitez dans le restaurant d'Alicia. La droite de la randonnée à l'intérieur, est autour de ce qui est arrière, dès qu'une moitié du mille de la piste de du chemin de fer, et vous pouvez obtenir toute chose que vous souhaitez dans le restaurant d'Alicia.

French to Greek:

Μπορείτε να αποκτήσετε όλο πράγμα που επιθυμείτε μέσα στο εστιατόριο alicia. Μπορείτε να αποκτήσετε όλο πράγμα που επιθυμείτε μέσα στο εστιατόριο alicia. Η δεξιά της εξόρμησης εσωτερικό, είναι γύρω από το οποίο είναι πίσω, μόλις ένα μισό χιλίων της διαδρομής ενός δρόμου του σιδερώματος, και μπορείτε να αποκτήσετε όλο πράγμα που επιθυμείτε μέσα στο εστιατόριο alicia.

Greek to English:

Can acquire all thing that you in wish in the restaurant Alicia. Can acquire all thing that you in wish in the restaurant Alicia. Right the campaign interior, he is round which he is behind, hardly one of half thousand way of street of ironing, and can acquire all thing that you in wish in the restaurant Alicia.

Loses something, n'est çe pas?

This Land Is Your Land

I’m afraid to allow myself to think it in any coherent manner, as in words, let alone commit it to writing, but what the hell. Right now, my migraine is just a little bruised-feeling patch above my left eyeball. Usually, though, the day starts out looking promising enough. It takes about half an hour for the migraine to wake up and jump back in. This is why I generally try not to think a lot if my head isn’t hurting. I don’t want to wake it up.

But I’ve been having thoughts, not just about migraines. All the Arlo-mania in my brain, even the lizard part of my brain, has had me listening to “This Land Is Your Land” to the point that it’s number two on my iPod. You’ve got to understand that I have about 8,000 songs on the thing. Most of them are just there because I’ve got so many CDs and so much room on the iPod that it seems criminal not to put them there, even if I never actually listen to them. But I would’ve thought I was too cool to have “This Land Is Your Land” at the top of the chart. See, I’ve always considered my iPod a barometer for my psychological state. Last February, it was Dylan’s “Ain’t Talkin’” from Modern Times. Last February sucked. Maybe sometime I’ll go into that. But my point is that it occurred to me that, you know, for a tiny, poor, honest-to-God hobo, Woody Guthrie must’ve had some kind of high self-esteem. I don’t know any of his songs that put other people down, accusing anyone of anything, but somehow they are all declarations of his right to be in this world, and probably none of his songs comes right out and says it any better than “This Land Is Your Land.” Because it’s not just that he’s telling me, or whoever’s listening, “Hey, kid, you’re okay. Your existence is not a crime, no matter how many people are annoyed by your way of life.” He’s also giving me a manifesto of my own, so I can walk up and down the street singing “This Land Is Your Land,” staking my own claim, marking this as communal territory, while inviting the neighbors to do the same. I don’t actually do this outside. Just once, right after the Arlo concert.

I guess what I’m saying is that if one crazy little hobo can be so audacious, maybe I can, too. Thanks, Woody.

Arlo, Migraines and Balconies

Last night, we did an amazing thing. We left the house, drove twenty-five miles, and got to see Arlo Guthrie on his Solo Reunion Tour: Together at Last. I must’ve snagged the last two tickets, because we were in the balcony, Row K, seats 1 and 3, which, oddly, were adjacent. That was all right, since I was expecting to have a total stranger sitting in between us, but that’s what we got. There is no Row L. Now I have not been to many concerts in my life, generally figuring staying at home and getting to act however I want and not worry about my hair or losing my stuff or whatever is preferable to being out among a bunch of people where I have to blend in or be a spectacle. The latter is easier for me. Well, sure enough, I made a spectacle of myself by not looking like an aging hippie or biker, mainly because I am only forty-one. That’s the first time I used the word only in front of forty-one, I think, at least as applied to me. But when Arlo did eventually get to “Alice’s Restaurant” song, he said, “Now it all started forty-three Thanksgivings ago, it was on, forty-three years ago on Thanksgiving.” I thought, damn, that’s a long time ago. Then I thought, wow, I sure am young. So it was fun. I had to use the bird glasses that Memaw gave me maybe twenty-five years ago for Christmas or maybe just for no reason, because Memaw was like that, giving you stuff, but, anyway, it was a long time ago, because I used them at the James Taylor concert in 1986, I think it was. Since I don’t watch a lot of birds or spy on the neighbors to the point of using special equipment, the bird glasses are practically like new. Anyhow, I could see Arlo. The thing was, I wasn’t convinced it was Arlo unless he started talking or singing. I mean, he had the same long wild hair in a ponytail, but he had a mustache and some glasses, and, well, he didn’t look much like the kid in the movie, which we had just re-watched to get into the Arlo spirit. Fortunately, he talked and sang a lot, and we sang a good bit, and it was great. I am still on an Arlo high. Which is good, because I have had the same damn migraine for about six days now, and I’m getting tired of it. I have thrown every controlled substance in my possession at it, and it’s not going away. I am just resigned to living this one out and being miserable if I stop and let myself. I have just adopted the very new attitude for me toward migraines, which is, well, fine, migraine. Make yourself comfortable. I am going to pretend you’re not here until you get bored and go torture an easier target. I have decided that I have been such an easy mark for so many years that the word gets out among migraines and they move in on me first. I am not going to be so hospitable any more. They want to follow me around, that’s their business. I’m not real hopeful about this strategy, but I figure it’s cheap and doesn’t require me to go out of the house, convince someone who can dispense narcotics (legally, that is) that I am, in fact, in this much pain, and, yes, I am drug-seeking, because only massive amounts of narcotics could kill this freakin’ thing. But at home, meanwhile, I can do any damn thing I want because it is my house, and, well, I don’t do anything illegal, that I know of. Weird and worrisome to the neighbors with impressionable youngsters, perhaps, but not illegal.

It’s a good thing we saw Arlo last night, though, because apparently he’s going to be in Berlin on Thursday, which is a lot further away than twenty-five miles, and you can’t drive there from here.

Also, a word on balconies. I had never been in a theatre with balconies before, and had only heard about them from my parents, namely, that they were where “the colored people” had to sit and even if you wanted to, you couldn’t sit there if you were white because that would be unnatural or ungodly or something. I might mention that I live in the South. I called my mom today and asked her whether black people used to be really small. Because I am not an especially tall person, and my knees were in the ears of the guy in front of me. I was sorry about it, but what was I going to do? They only bend at one place. And if my rear end had been two inches wider, which is actually not terribly unusual, I would have been sitting on the armrests.

But, that’s America. And this land was made for you and me.

Here's to Bill

My great uncle Bill has been saying I should start a blog for, well, I didn't mark it down on my calendar, but for a long time now. I'm pretty sure that his suggestion was a defense mechanism to keep him from being the target of my every thought, but he put up with my e-mail for a good long time. Now he is eighty and cites that as an excuse for every little teensy thing, like not answering my e-mails every twenty minutes. I don't know that that's a good excuse, but I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt, never having been eighty myself. When he doesn't answer my e-mails, I really get annoying and call him. Usually he's doing something like scraping scrambled eggs off the ceiling. How they got there in the first place is something I never even bothered to ask. I mean, I try to give the man some space. I figure if you've got scrambled eggs on the ceiling, you don't need an inquisition on top of it. Now when I call, I often get an answering machine that's set not to take messages. I try not to take this personally. I just never heard of an answering machine that didn't take messages. So with tears in my eyes, I set off to think of someone else to bug with my new problem, that Bill won't even take a message from me because he has set his answering machine against me. I still have things to say. My cat, James, sleeps through half of what I say to him and my imaginary friends go play with someone else when I start to talk to them. So you can see my problem.

Hence, this blog. Someone besides me will benefit from my pontifications. I will notify Bill of its existence so that he can continue to experience my every thought.

Tomorrow night at 8:00, I will be seeing Arlo Guthrie in concert. Solo. No Pete, no Oklahoma Swing Band, just Arlo. Pete's great, but I figure he's probably scraping scrambled eggs off the ceiling and can't come make everybody sing. It's up to me and Arlo. People who haven't experienced Arlo past the "City of New Orleans" have really missed the boat. That's a great song, but not his strongest suit. He is an interactive act, like Pete, and, more important, he's smart and funny. Funny is important when your imaginary friends start forming cliques that you aren't part of. And this is a big deal, because I am actually paying to leave my house, whereas normally you have to drag me away from my desk. In all my life, I have gone to two concerts, both in the 80s: James Taylor and Joan Baez. They are major events for me, unlike my brother, Chris, who I swear went to a different concert every other weekend from seventeen to thirty, often driving hundreds of miles for the privilege.

So good morning America, how are ya? I'll be trying to learn HTML and JavaScript and all that kind of stuff that makes blogs sexy, but right now, I'm just saying hello.

And you can get anything you want at Alice's restaurant.